| ROCKSTEADY
PROJECT #482.2 "It's Turtle trashin' time!" Preamble: For some reason, there was a significant disparity between a lot of the early TMNT toys and their animated cartoon counterparts. One could argue that they were never intended to be identical to one another, I suppose, but the cartoon series existed at least partly to sell the toys, so you'd think the show would have done a better job of more accurately advertising the product in question. Rocksteady is a good example—other than being a rhinoceros wearing military clothing, the action figure looks almost nothing like his depiction on television. (It's worth mentioning that the original sculpt for Rocksteady was much larger and fatter but that it had to be scrapped because it was too top-heavy to properly balance1. This might be the reason why the finished toy was so slim—they were overcompensating on the second attempt.) In any event, while the original Rocksteady action figure is outfitted in an army helmet and black tank top, the cartoon version of Rocksteady wears a bright yellow shirt and is equipped with an ammo belt slung over his shoulder along with grenades and a knife, none of which were included with the action figure. (Rocksteady did have an army helmet during the five-part pilot episode, but he must have suddenly started feeling fashion-conscious because he ditched it some time before the beginning of the second season.) I put off working on Rocksteady for a long time, partly because he's not really a favorite character of mine (Bebop is far more awesome) and partly because I think I knew that ten years ago my skills weren't adequate to take on what was to be a nearly complete rebuilding of the toy. (I'm classifying this as a resculpt since calling it a kitbash doesn't seem to do it justice—not when I had to recreate so much of the original toy.) Construction: When I originally started working on this project, I thought I'd be able to whittle off his helmet, sharpen his rhino horns, and maybe reposition his eyes and ears. (This is about as far as I got.) In the end, though, I decided it would be better to do it properly and design an entirely new head. I ended up rebuilding nearly the entire figure, in the end. The major parts I redesigned were the boots, the body, and his head. For starters, I really wanted to give him some proper combat boots since the original ones seemed way too small to contain those big ol' mutated rhino toes. The pant cuffs gave me a little trouble because I was trying to get the folds of the material to look natural. I also bulked up his body, adding a pot belly (with visible belly button) and a larger upper chest to reflect the fact that Rocksteady is significantly heavier in the cartoon than his original action figure depicted him. I also resculpted the back of his shirt, making sure to add that distinctive ripped hole in the fabric. Rocksteady has four fingers on each hand (three fingers and a thumb) in the cartoon, but the action figure's hands were sculpted with five fingers. I thought about doing something to his hands with Sculpey, but I knew that would make them too fragile if I wanted to equip him with weapons (you need to bend his fingers slightly to put guns in his hands, and regular Sculpey is not very flexible after it's baked; I really need to get some Super Sculpey). So, I did the next best thing and gave him the hands from a broken Triceraton action figure. The new big, beefy hands really work well for Rocksteady and help to bulk up his appearance. For his head, I had to crack his body open to remove the original head; I saved the existing peg and built my new head around the remnants of the old one. I tried very hard to capture the look of his animation model in three-dimensional form; I sculpted three separate heads until I arrived at one I finally liked. I reused his original ears as well as his horns (which I whittled to a sharp point). His teeth are separate pieces of plastic that were each attached individually. His ammunition belt deserves special mention here, since it was an accessory from another action figure and would have been very nearly the perfect size, except the bullets were about twice as long as I wanted. So, I painstakingly cut the tips of the bullets off, sliced off some of the length, and then reattached each individual one. (The ammo belt has 55 bullets on it. I know because I counted them.) I kept the original belt accessory, though I did have to make some substantial modifications to it, not the least of which was cutting off one of the turtle shells on his hips since he consistently wears only one in the cartoon. Rocksteady wears what appears to be a wooden sword that's strapped to his back, though in at least one episode ("The Catwoman From Channel Six," I think) we see that it's actually the sheathe for a small dagger. I used the General Traag dagger (which was identical in design to the knife that originally came with Rocksteady), modifying the handle and cutting down the blade and then building a scabbard for it out of two pieces of plastic that I sandwiched together. It was important to me that the dagger still be usable as an accessory, not just permanently attached to his back. The weapons that came with the General Traag figure were actually based on the animation models for the stun lasers that Rocksteady and Bebop carried in the cartoon (one supposes they're all Dimension X standard issue), so they made ideal accessories for ths project. Rocksteady carried either a smaller pistol or a larger rifle, depending on what kind of mood he was in, I guess, so I gave them both a new coat of paint and equipped Rocksteady with one of each, just like I did with Bebop. (I did add a pointy tip to the large blaster for the sake of accuracy, which I suspect was probably omitted for safety reasons.) Comments: This is actually my second attempt at working on this toy. My first try was when I was about 15 and had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I managed to get as far as painting his shirt yellow with some of my dad's model paints, and I also built a bandolier for him out of the rubber padding from a table tennis racket and some masking tape (yes, seriously), tucking his knife behind it on his back. It was an okay attempt, and it's historically significant in that it's the very first time I used model paints to modify an action figure. (I didn't think to take a digital photograph of the first version for posterity before I dismantled it and started doing the new one, so this blurry photo is the only remaining picture of the original project.) I began work on this project several years ago, but I was avoiding the task of having to sculpt an entirely new head, so I put the project to bed for a long time. (Sometimes I think these projects really benefit from not trying to force them into existence before they're ready. It just ain't natural.) 1The Official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Treasury, 1991, Villard Publishing. |
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This Page Created: 12/10/2007
Last Updated: 1/12/2012
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